A proximity warning, and the Pella’s PDCs shifted automatically, splashing an enemy torpedo that had been lost among the cloud of converging fire. Marco laughed. His other ships had taken his cue, turning toward the Torngarsuk. One of al-Dujaili’s ships misjudged, took a torpedo from the Ganymede ships in her side, and crumpled, venting air. One of Marco’s ships lost a thruster to a torpedo, and three of the remaining enemy coordinated to mow it down with PDC fire like lions descending on a crippled gazelle. Even in that moment of loss and rage, Marco felt the joy of the fight.
It was ugly, brutal, direct. They were past clever solutions and elegant traps now. This was toe-to-toe throwing punches until someone fell to the ground. This was the urge that had put mankind on the battlefield with stones and lengths of wood, beating each other blood on blood on blood until only one side remained. And that side was Marco’s. The Free Navy, and fuck all the rest.
The Torngarsuk died last, dancing around arcs of PDC fire while al-Dujaili shouted defiance and obscenity over the radio. And then didn’t. The Torngarsuk lost power, drifted, and detonated. Its own tiny, brief sun. Marco fell back into his crash couch, aware for the first time in he couldn’t say how long of the thrust gravity pulling at him. The tactical display showed two of the enemy ships fleeing. He hadn’t noticed when they’d left, but it hadn’t been recent—they were already far outside his effective range. Farther and faster with every breath. He smiled, noticed the taste of blood on his lips. He’d bitten his cheek. He didn’t remember that either.
Slowly, his consciousness seemed to broaden. Not just his monitor and his couch and his body. There was an alert sounding somewhere. A smell of smoke and the bright scent of fire suppressants. His headache had bloomed without him noticing into a throbbing unpleasantness, and his hands felt like his fingers had bent backward and were only just coming back to true. He looked around the deck. Josie and Miral and Karal, all looking back at him. He lifted a fist.
“Victory,” he said, and coughed.
But the victory came at a price. Two of his reinforcements from Ganymede were done, the crews dead, the ships hardly more than scrap. Three of the ships from the Callisto yards would need repair. The Pella had suffered a breakdown in the air recycler that was annoying but trivial. Enough that they had to land in the shipyard again for a few days while it was repaired and tested. Johnson’s lickspittle OPA had taken worse, died in greater number, but still, this wasn’t the sort of success Marco could afford many more of.
And add to the injury the insult of being lectured by Nico Sanjrani.
“This has to stop,” the little economist said from the screen. “The damage to infrastructure is getting worse, and the more the curve deflects, the harder—the more nearly impossible—it’s going to be to pull it back up.”
Marco, in the office he’d appropriated for Free Navy’s command on Callisto, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes. The message had been sent with heavy encryption, its origin path and return hidden in layers of mathematics. All he knew for certain was that Sanjrani was far enough away that the light delay and the limitations of equipment kept him from a real-time conversation. For that, Marco was profoundly grateful.
“I can resend the analysis,” Sanjrani whined. “But this situation is making things worse than the numbers show. Worse. Whatever it takes to stop it, you need to do that. If we don’t start building a separate exchange economy soon—and by soon I mean weeks or months ago—we may have to reimagine the whole project. We may not be able to get away from inner-planet-backed scrip at all, and then we can be as politically independent as we want, only it will still devolve back to financial constraints by the inner planets, which was what we were trying to get away from in the first place.”
Sanjrani looked tired. Stressed. There was an ashy tone to his skin, and his eyes seemed sunken. Given that he was holed away somewhere safe from battle, it seemed more than a little histrionic. Marco stopped the message—there was another twenty minutes in the spool—and composed his reply. It wasn’t a long one.
“Nico,” he said gently. “You give me too much credit. None of us have the power to control what atrocities Earth and Mars and their misguided allies in the Belt will commit to stop us. We can only hold to our principles and our dreams. We will absolutely prevail, in time. When the inners put down their arms and leave the Belt in peace, we will have the power to end this. Until then, our only options are to defend ourselves or let our people die. I won’t compromise on that, and I know you won’t either.”
There. Thirty seconds to answer thirty minutes of alarmist maundering. That was what efficiency looked like. He sent the message back on its looping way, checked the newsfeeds—the battle at Titan was entering a second day with heavy casualties on both sides, and still too early to know what he’d won or lost in it—and the work reports on his ships—the Pella was ready to launch, but not with any size of escort for at least another three days—and then heaved himself up and walked through to the meeting room.
Whatever it had been before—engineers’ workspace, security building, storage—the room was now the war council of the Free Navy. Karal, Wings, Filip, Sárta from the Pella. Captain Lister from the Coin Silver, Captain Chou from the Lína. They sat on white upholstered chairs, their uniforms lending them a formality. They stood and saluted when he entered the room. Except for Filip who nodded as a son to his parent.
“Thank you for coming,” Marco said. “We have plans to make. This assault must not go unanswered. We have to mount a counterstrike and show the inners that we aren’t intimidated. Show our strength.”
A murmur of agreement passed through the room, no one actually speaking loud enough to be heard. Only not to be out of line.
Except, to his surprise, Filip.
“Another one?” his son said. “The last grand gesture did so well, que?”
Marco froze. The anger in Filip’s voice—more than anger, contempt—was like being slapped. All around the room, the others went silent and still.
“Something to say, Filipito?” Marco asked, his voice low and calm and rich with threat. But Filip chose not to hear it.
“Yeah, something. We had this conversation before, yeah? Walked away from Ceres and said we needed to plan a show of strength. Counterattack. Keep them afraid of us. We did this before, and now we’re here again.” Filip’s face was flushed, his breath fast and heaving like he’d run to get here. “Only last time it wasn’t esá coyos la, was it? It was Dawes and Rosenfeld and Sanjrani. And Pa, yeah? Inner circle. Heart of the Free Navy. Part of the plan.”
“You’re tired, Filip,” Marco said. “You should go rest.”
“How does this get different from last time you said it?” Filip said. “Tell me that.”
Rage rose up in Marco’s breast, filling his head with heat and fumes. He could smell it like a chemical fire.
“Want to know, me,” Filip said, voice trembling. “This plan we’ve got. And the last plan before it. And the one before that. Which one’s the real plan? Is there? Or are we just falling down and pretending we meant to?”
Marco smiled. When he stepped toward his son, Filip braced against a blow. Jaw tight. Hands in fists. Marco tousled his hair.
“Boys, eh?” he said to the others. “Boys and their tantrums. Captain Chou. Can we hear your report?”
Chou cleared his throat. “We have a few targets might serve,” he said, pulling up his hand terminal and sending a data file to the wall screen. “Depends how it fits with the larger strategy.”
Filip went white, his jaw jutting out. Chou went on talking, gesturing at the wall screen as he listed his suggestions and plans. Marco kept his gaze on his son and let the others pretend nothing was happening but the meeting. If you act like a child, you will be treated like a child. Embarrass me and I will embarrass you.
Filip swallowed, turned, and walked out of the room, shoulders back and head held high. Marco laughed as the door shut, just loud enough he was certain Filip would hear him.
He turned to the wall screen. “You don’t list Tycho,” he said. “Why not?”